The Angry Woman Suite (11 page)

“Please, Francis, a little lower,” he begged, looking up from the table where he was writing. “Swing is not for thinking. It’s for jitterbugging. Maybe something else? A pianist would be nice. Might even inspire you to practice. That Duchin fellow is good. Put on
‘Moon over Miami.’”

I rolled my eyes.

“All right, then. Put on Witherspoon. Put on ‘Dazed.’”

“Dazed” was no less sweet, but I put it on.

“I’ve started a journal,” Mr. Madsen suddenly announced. “Everything about your grandfather and me and Matthew Waterston, and how we started Festival, and well … everything. Everything about your history, Francis. Things you’ll need to know someday. Things your children will need to know.”

“No kidding, Mr. Madsen … isn’t that something? Because just this morning I was looking at my mother’s portrait and trying to figure out why Matthew Waterston painted Mother the way he did, her looking so nice and all. Actually,
why
he even painted her.”

Mr. Madsen looked at me as if considering the part in my hair. “Matthew Waterston painted more than one portrait of your mother, Francis. And she became very famous as a result of their collaboration. That’s a big part of your history.”

I couldn’t have been more shocked had he told me Mother had once done time at Sing-Sing. I told him to repeat the part about Mother being famous. Twice.

“Yes, she was quite the celebrity. She was the model for ten of Matthew’s most celebrated paintings. All different, but put together those paintings told a story. The group of them is called The Angry Woman Suite.”

“Say again one more time.”

But Mr. Madsen wandered. “Most considered Matthew Waterston a realist, but he considered himself an abstractionist at heart. He even painted canvasses that suggested music. Isn’t that something, Francis?
Painting
music?”

I asked Mr. Madsen where I might see Waterston’s other paintings of Mother. He hesitated before answering, “They’re privately held.”

“What’s that mean, privately held?”

“It means you can’t see them. Nobody can.”

“That doesn’t seem right.”

“Right or no, it’s the way it is … and, Francis, it’s best you not mention the suite to your family—trust me. Now please, no more questions. History must be approached in a linear fashion, meeting players first, then the meat, otherwise endings are totally incomprehensible.” He added softly, “I’m writing a story, Francis. Writing stories takes time. It takes quiet.”

“But I thought you said you’re writing history … a journal.”

“Same difference. Stories, history—both are about power. Who gets it, who gets to keep it, who loses it. History
explains
everything, though. Now, patience, please. You’ll have it to read soon enough, thank you very much. When I’m finished writing everything down.”

I endured listening to Witherspoon until Mr. Madsen went out, taking the notebook he’d been writing in with him, and then I took Witherspoon off the phonograph and put Benny Goodman back on.

I detested pianists.

Mr. Madsen gave me a nickel for every two weeks’ work I did at the museum. I offered the nickel to Earl, who was immediately suspicious.

“I didn’t steal it,” I said. “I worked for it. It’s yours—but I need something in return. I can’t wake up in the mornings. Get me up with you everyday, will you? But it’s a secret, the money. You can’t tell anyone, especially Stella.”

Earl started taking me into East Chester with him most mornings. The women thought Earl had a job at the newspaper. He didn’t. We loitered at the back of the railroad station, slapping our cold limbs.

“Why do
you
do it?” I asked one particularly bitter morning.

“I love fresh air, pissant.”

“No,
really.”

“Really?” Earl’s cap was pulled down over his eyes. Only his nose and lips showed. “I don’t always like what I see, pissant.”

I panicked when Earl totally escaped Grayson House, joining the army. I kept seeing Lothian eyeing me, licking her lips. I couldn’t sleep at night, afraid I’d oversleep, afraid Lothian would come for me. By four most mornings I was already tip-toeing down the corridor to the door at the end of the hallway that opened onto a staircase that ran down the outside of Grayson House. Then I wandered until it was time for school. No one ever saw me.

Grandmother was the first to comment on my wan appearance, and Mother said if I didn’t start looking better I could start going straight to bed after dinner. Amazingly, she also said a real treat was in store. I was ten years old the evening Mother drove me into East Chester to watch Mr. Madsen do his “Folks At Home” radio show. It was 1938.

I hadn’t realized how huge a celebrity Mr. Madsen actually was—I’d had to see for myself. I sat openmouthed as he played the fiddle and told jokes, splicing in gossip and tidbits of local history. He joined the Delaware Boys in two songs, “The Good Ship Lollipop” and “Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddle.”

The Delaware Boys, five of them that night, were on sax, trombone, clarinet, cornet and drums. They were the cream of Mr. Madsen’s crop, ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, carefully culled from classrooms past and present. There was actually a total of forty Delaware Boys who took turns playing for Mr. Madsen’s radio show. They also marched in parades across the state and headlined Festival every year. I watched those five that first night enthralled, knowing what I wanted for the rest of my life. I wanted to be a Delaware Boy.

Mother and I went up to the bandstand after the show.

“I want to learn another instrument,” I said to Mr. Madsen, jockeying for a position next to him. The Delaware Boys were packing up instruments. Mr. Madsen was distracted.

“Bands don’t have pianists,” I said, tugging on his sleeve. He glanced over his shoulder and something flickered in his eyes, seeing Mother.

He nodded and said, “Magdalene,” then seemed to go to great lengths to make himself look even busier, though by then most of the Delaware Boys were leaving. “Some bands
do
have pianists. But since when are you interested in playing
anything,
Francis? You don’t practice the piano as it is.”

“Since deciding I need to play something besides piano. I need something … portable. I’d really like to be in your band, Mr. Madsen. I’d really like to be a Delaware Boy.” I had a sudden inspiration: “I want to play swing, not just listen to it.”

“I don’t do swing, thank you very much, and besides you’re not old enough for this band. You have to be fourteen. I make an exception for you, I have to do the same for every other Tom, Dick and Harry.”

“Please,” I pleaded.

“Sorry.”

I began to itch up and down my arms, the back of my neck.
“Please,”
I begged.

Mother surprised me, saying, “He’s overtired,” which got all of Mr. Madsen’s attention, because he suddenly gave Mother a long, searching look, which I couldn’t read, but which she seemed to do fine with, because she offered Mr. Madsen a lift back home to Washington’s Headquarters.

“You want to play clarinet?” was what Mr. Madsen said, getting out of the car.

“There’s only one Benny Goodman,” I answered.

Mother and I went inside Washington’s Headquarters. Mr. Madsen took a trumpet from his music chest and handed it over. “Okay, smarty-pants. Make loud.” I blew into the trumpet’s mouthpiece. My breath, hollow-sounding, came out the bell. “Lips together,” Mr. Madsen instructed. “Like you’re turning them against your teeth. Now make like a buzz.”

I made a buzz. It was feeble. I spat, then buzzed some more, trying time and again, until when, finally, there was one rich note: golden, true, loud and all mine.

My long fingers reached for the horn’s valves. They were home.

The sore on my upper lip grew to the size of a pea. Soft, it busted open repeatedly, oozed, then crusted over, until two years later my mouth was nearly impenetrable, hard and sturdy enough to withstand the friction, or
embouchure,
of lips pursed firm against mouthpiece for extended periods of time.

“Don’t push it,” Aidan cautioned. He’d given me permission to use his first name on weekends. “Go easy on that lip.”

I’d pushed it, forgetting Matthew Waterston and the plan to cure women. Or that my mother had ever been famous. Dreaming instead of making the most heathen music ever, of being the greatest swing-master ever, off for the orchard by dawn most mornings, armed with my pipe dream and golden horn, fooling Lothian, fooling them all, reaching, always reaching for that one note that touched the sky and the moon. Winning the game against everyone who’d ever been mean to me. Striving to be better, blaring my horn at their profound ordinariness.

And Lothian heard me. Oh, but she heard me loud and clear. “Damn fool boy’s going to blow his head off,” she griped.

Mother told Lothian to shut up, but Grandmother said it was heathen, the very idea of anyone blowing a horn in the dead of night. Mother subsequently told Grandmother, who didn’t drive, that it was a long walk into town for that cold cream she set so much store by, and Stella wrapped herself in blankets and followed me out to the orchard where she whisked a basting brush back and forth against the bottom of a pot, keeping time to my music. A variety of kitchen accoutrements followed the basting brush, all producing different tones, and all of which annoyed me to no end. But Stella was fascinated by the sounds she could make.

“Louder, Francis,” she demanded, sitting on a tree stump, banging furiously on a pot. “And faster. Make my arms hurt.”

I took to running back and forth to school and Washington’s Headquarters, and as a result I could hold my breath well over two minutes. Summers, I practiced the horn until my lip gave out, which was sometimes all day, and I continued working my way through Aidan’s ever-growing record collection while straightening the Washington’s Headquarters museum, becoming particularly enamored of Glenn Miller, of his “Bugle Call Rag,” and of trumpeter Harry James, admiring his high-pitched trills, attempting to make the same sounds. And of course there was Bunny Berrigan,
the
ultimate master. His version of “I Can’t Get Started With You,” those pure high notes and trills, gave me chills.

“No trying trills,” Aidan said firmly when I asked him to show me how they were done. “And when you sit in with the Delaware Boys, no improvising, Francis. We’re a company, not a one-man show. We play by
my
rules, and I’m doing you a favor even letting you sit—”

“Just tell me
how
to do trills,” I begged. “I want to be like Berrigan.
”

“If I could do a trill, I might. Maybe.”

“You
don’t know how?”

“Look, Francis, I don’t know
everything.
Trills are physically demanding, I know that much … they’re
work.
They’re controlled almost completely by extremely powerful lip muscles and a strong diaphragm. Forcing a trumpet, say, on a high C, to go up a third to high G, then back down to high C, again and again,
oscillating many times a second
, is tremendously hard. It requires a very developed
embouchure
and lots of lessons.”

“But that’s what I have you for,” I said, accepting that trills were just one more thing I’d have to teach myself. “Lessons. And I’m not afraid of work.”

“You grow up, smarty-pants, kiss some girls, toughen up those lips, then we’ll talk trills. In the meantime, do sit-ups for a rock-hard diaphragm, thank you very much.”

I raised the bar on my training, doing 350 sit-ups a night, until my abdomen rippled. I added pushups for good measure, and my shoulders broadened.

I took some of the money I’d earned and bought a lock for my bedroom door, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that sooner.

I locked myself in my room and slept like the dead.

“Damn war overseas,” Aidan sighed one early Saturday morning in 1942. He sat at the table, newspaper before him, forehead in his hands. I ran a dust rag over the tops of the showcases, preparing for the onslaught of museum visitors. “Damn Germans. Will the bloody fools never learn? Will
we
never learn?”

Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor had barely fazed me, and I didn’t even try keeping up with what the Germans were doing. I was only fourteen and I’d just been made an
official
Delaware Boy. And I’d also made a friend, my first ever, a trombonist named Buster Carlyle, two years older than I was, and also a Delaware Boy. Somehow Buster’s shiftless sometimes-farming family had managed to make itself even more outcast than mine, wearing older-than-God clothes and living in what was worse than a shanty on the outskirts of town. Buster seemed overwhelmed with surprise and gratitude the first time I’d suggested we go into town together, to the five and dime after jamming at Washington’s Headquarters, to listen to Goodman’s “At The Downtown Strutter’s Ball” on someone else’s nickel. I wasn’t concerned with struggles overseas. I was concerned with being a hepcat, with incorporating the masters’ techniques into a repertoire of my own. I was concerned with getting Aidan to let me solo at Festival that summer. I was “knocked-out,” to use swing slang, so engrossed in swing I was oblivious to everything else. I was glib.

“War’s a long way away. May I use the phonograph now?”

“No, Francis, you may
not.”
Aidan’s voice rose. “Have you nothing else in your head but that goddamn swing?”

“But—”

“You any idea where Earl is overseas?”

“He never writes, not sure he even knows how,” I quipped.

Aidan stood and slapped his newspaper against the table, looking like he wanted to hit me with it, like it was all my fault Earl didn’t write. “Oh, he can write,” he shot back.

I’d never felt annoyed with Aidan before. I didn’t know what to do with the feeling.

Aidan looked down. “Sorry. Not you, Francis. I’ve said these very same things about war before—to your mother, as a matter of fact. When
she
was my student, back before the start of the Great War. But I was wrong. Consolidated policy could’ve saved Europe and
us
today’s tragedy, or at least the scope of what it’s become,
if
we’d taken our lessons and committed them to practice. I … no,
we’ve
paid dearly for this isolationism, and now, despite everything we’ve been through, it looks as if we’re to pay more.”